Mrs. Marne called their “little escapade,” “because when he came he seemed so disturbed and depressed and by the time we got back he was quite himself again. I think it was mainly you, Isabella,” she smiled at her sister, “for you seemed to have a very stimulating effect on him.”
“Oh, I’m willing to be a cocktail for him whenever he wants to bring his auto over here. Never mind, mother,” and she kissed one finger at Mrs. Marne in response to that lady’s shocked “Isabella!” “That’s just modern symbolism, you know. And the ride has made you look as if you’d had one yourself. I’m going to write to Warren that I’ve found a much nicer and handsomer man than he is and if he doesn’t get a stronger grip on my heart right quick it’s likely to get away from him.”
“Bella, dear! Don’t say such things!” admonished her mother in a grieved tone.
Isabella flew to her side and patted her cheek and kissed her brow. “There, there, mother! Don’t you know I’m just funning? Warren is the best man in the world, even if he hasn’t got bee-youtiful, caressing brown eyes, and I love him awfully, and we’re going to be married and live happily forever after. But, all the same, Felix Brand is perfectly lovely, and you think so too, now, don’t you, mother dear!”
“We all think alike about Mr. Brand, I’m sure,” she answered.
“Except Billikins,” amended Henrietta, and then told them of the fox terrier’s disgraceful behavior. “It seemed so queer for him to act that way,” she added, “when he’s always so friendly toward visitors and so effusive that he usually has to be put out of the room.”
“It was strange,” said Mrs. Marne, “for with his pleasant voice and gentle manner you would think Mr. Brand would be as attractive to animals as he certainly is to people. And he must be as kind and sweet-natured as he seems, for not one young man in a thousand would have taken the trouble he did to give three forlorn women a little pleasure.”
Henrietta made no reply as she laughed with her mother at the lively scolding Isabella was giving to the dog, but her thoughts were busy with the problem of why Felix Brand had seemed so anxious for them to go with him.
Her loyalty to her employer would not let her throw the least shade upon their enthusiastic appreciation of his courtesy and kindness. But her months of work at his side – she had been his secretary almost a year – had given her an intimate knowledge of his character and of his habits of thought and feeling.
She had learned that his habitual mental attitude was, “What is there in this for me?” He did not indeed use just those words or give such crude expression to his self-centeredness; but she had come to know that personal advantage was the usual mainspring of his actions. Presently deciding that Isabella’s enlivening effect upon his mood had inspired his desire for their company, her mind went on to busy itself with speculation over the cause for his despondency and uneasiness.
“I believe it must have something to do with that Hugh Gordon he mentioned, whoever he is,” she thought. “For he seemed most disturbed when speaking of him. Maybe it’s some relative who is giving him trouble – some black sheep of his family, very likely.”
She walked to the window and stood there silently, her thoughts hovering around this unknown personality, and became conscious of the upspringing in her breast of a feeling of disapproval and even of enmity toward the man because of the trouble he seemed to be giving to the employer she admired so much and for whose appreciation and unvarying kindness she felt so much gratitude.
Then there surged over her a wave of discontent, against whose threatened onslaught she had half consciously been doing battle ever since she had talked with Felix Brand in the morning. Now it was upon her. How monotonous seemed her life, how destitute of the pleasures that most girls had as their right! If she could only use for her own enjoyment some of that money she worked so hard to earn! But that everlasting mortgage on their home which had to be paid off – how the thought of it irked and galled when she longed to travel, buy beautiful clothes, go to the theatre and the opera, have young friends and ride and drive and play golf and dance and sing with them. It was the playtime of life and she was having to spend it in work, work, work!
“Oh, there isn’t anybody who would enjoy all those things as I should,” she thought, “and I want them so!”
She turned impatiently from the window and her glance fell upon her mother, smiling gently and happily as she lay back in her easy chair, and remorse entered her heart.
“What an ungrateful little beast I am,” she stormed at herself, “to feel like that when I ought to be thankful I can earn money enough to keep mother in comfort! Was it because Mr. Brand was here that I felt that way? Harry Marne, be ashamed of yourself! Aren’t you old enough to be responsible for your own thoughts?”
She sat down beside her mother and taking her hand pressed it tenderly against her cheek.
CHAPTER V
Mrs. Brand’s Dream Son
It was half a week after that spring-like Sunday when Felix Brand motored to his secretary’s home on Staten Island, and a feathery pall, white as forgiven sins, was sifting down from the heavens upon all the eastern seaboard. In a town within the suburban radius of Philadelphia its mantle of purity lay almost undisturbed upon lawns and streets and vacant lots. Two women were looking out upon the snow-covered earth and snow-filled sky from the side window of a cottage near the edge of the town. One, small and gray-haired, perhaps looked older than she was because of the pathetic droop of her shoulders and the worn, patient expression of her face. But lined and sad though her countenance was, it told of a sweet and gentle soul and it was lighted now with a look of pleasure.
“Just look at it, Penelope!” she exclaimed, a little thrill of enthusiasm in her voice. “I never saw it snow harder, or look prettier! Isn’t it beautiful!”
She turned a pair of soft brown eyes upon a younger woman sitting beside her in a wheel chair, who put down the book she had been reading, and sighed as she answered: “Yes, it is beautiful, mother, very beautiful. But when I look at it I can’t help thinking how long it will be until spring comes again and I can be out in the yard under the trees.”
The mother put out her hand, small and once of the shape that chirognomists call “the artistic hand,” but now wrinkled, bony and toil-hardened, and rested it gently for a moment upon the mass of dark, waving hair, already well-threaded with gray, that crowned the other’s head. Her face filled with sympathy but her voice broke cheerfully upon the silence:
“Oh, it won’t be long now, Penelope, and not a bit longer because of this beautiful storm!”
The figure in the wheel chair bent forward again and looked out upon the pearly whiteness of the earth. It was a sad travesty of the human form, undersized, humped and crooked. But it bore a noble head with a broad, full brow and a strong, intellectual face that had in it something of the elder woman’s sweetness of expression. But in her brown eyes the other’s softness and wistfulness gave place to a keener, more flashing look that told of a high and soaring spirit. And in the lines of her face was a hint of possible storminess, though it was softened by an expression of self-mastery, eloquent of many an inner battle waged and won.
The window from which they looked commanded one side of their own wide yard, a vacant block, and beyond that a cross-street. The snow was feathering down so fast that it gave to the air a milky translucence through which bulked dimly an occasional traveler on the other thoroughfare. Penelope’s eyes fixed themselves upon one of these vague shapes.
“Look, mother!” she exclaimed. “Do you see that man just turning the corner
